Click it, even if it doesn't warrant a ticket

William Hageman, Tribune Newspapers

You use seat belts, right?

Most people do. The undeniable safety advantages, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's ubiquitous "Click It or Ticket" campaign, the fear of seeing those flashing lights in your rearview mirror all help explain why, according to the NHTSA, more than 80 percent of front-seat passengers buckle up.

But according to a recent survey by LeaseTrader.com, an auto lease transfer company, Americans still have a long way to go. Especially those in the back seat.

The survey came about after a lunch outing by several co-workers a couple of months ago.

"I was sitting in the passenger side in the front seat," said John Sternal, vice president of LeaseTrader.com, "and I turned around to say something to one of the rear-seat passengers, and neither of them had buckled their seat belts. I don't know why, but the thought immediately hit me, and I started to poke around and ask, 'How often do you guys wear a seat belt in the back seat?' And they were like, 'Never.'"

He asked others at work and got much the same answer. So the company decided to survey registered members on its website.

LeaseTrader.com asked about 1,000 men and women who had ridden in the back seats of cars at least 25 times last year about their seat belt habits.

The survey found that in states with laws requiring belts to be used in the back seat, men said they wore one only 14.3 percent of the time. Women said they buckled up 18.4 percent of the time. In states without a back-seat seat belt law, 9.6 percent of men said they used them in the back seat and 16.3 percent of women reported buckling up.

"There's so much attention to front-seat seat belts, especially if you're a driver," Sternal said. "But if you're sitting in the back seat, it's like, 'Oh, I've got this big seat in front of me and I'm not going anywhere.' Which is not the case. It's very dangerous."

Science and statistics bear that out.

According to the American College of Emergency Physicians, seat belts provide the greatest protection against ejection in a crash. Three-fourths of people ejected from cars are killed. And although the back seat is the safest place to ride in a car, back-seat passengers not wearing seat belts are at risk of serious injury and are a potential fatal threat to others in the car during a crash if they, in effect, become a missile.

The Presidio Group, a privately held risk management and insurance advisory company, contends on their website that "in a frontal collision occurring at 30 mph, an unbelted person continues to move forward and hit the windshield" or back of the front seat at about 30 mph, "the same velocity as a person falling from the top of a three-story building."

"The laws of physics are not suspended because you're sitting in the rear seat," said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Indeed, a study published in 2002 in the British medical journal the Lancet found that "the risk of death of belted front-seat occupants with unbelted rear-seat passengers was raised nearly fivefold." If rear-seat belts had been used, the study found, "almost 80 percent of deaths of belted front-seat occupants could have been avoided."

In passenger vehicle occupant deaths in 2009, 65 percent of fatally injured adults in the back seat were unrestrained, versus 48 percent in front seats.

One remedy might be increased enforcement.

"Seat belts are one of the very basic things where research shows that mandatory seat belt laws increase usage and decrease deaths," Rader said. "And yet we still have these gaps in state laws across the country."

Enforcement of seat belt laws is either primary (law enforcement officers can ticket a driver for not wearing a seat belt without any other violation taking place) or secondary (a ticket may be issued for a seat belt violation only when there is another traffic violation). State laws are a mishmash of confusing regulations.

Rader said that since 2005, 11 states ( Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin) have enacted primary seat belt laws, and seven states ( Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, South Carolina and Texas) have expanded coverage to all seats.

Currently, 12 states (Arkansas, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming) have laws pending that would enact primary enforcement or expand coverage to all seats. Additionally, three states (Alaska, Maine and Indiana) have legislation to change the current primary seat belt law to secondary enforcement.

The most common reason people gave for not wearing a seat belt was they forgot (63.2 percent). Next most prevalent was they didn't believe it was necessary (13.4 percent).

Asked how often the driver reminded them to buckle up, 75.3 percent said never.

Asked if seat belt laws influenced their decision to wear one, 85.2 percent said yes while in the front seat, and only 4.4 percent said yes when sitting in the back seat.

More than three-quarters (75.2 percent) of those surveyed said they almost always wore a seat belt while riding in the front seat.

The reasoning for all this is, well, there really isn't any.

"The technology for car seats for children in the back of the vehicle has gotten so incredible," LeaseTrader.com Vice President John Sternal said as an example. "When I was a little kid, my dad's forearm was my front-seat restraint. Today, no one would dare put their child in the back seat of a car without strapping them in. But for themselves, it's, 'Nah, don't need it.' It's pretty scary."